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9.26.2006

More posts. And actual contact from Jenniferworld, if you happen to be waiting on that. I promise.In a few days, hopefully I'll have my new home internet system up and running.Till then, all internet access for me gets limited to my work computer and occasionally my parents'... but my work computer won't even let me on Myspace... big shocker, that.Much as I like my job, I don't like staying past five-thirty--not even to send emails or blog or comment on blogs or otherwise feed my internet addiction. So... for now, I'm going home.Talk to y'all soon!

9.21.2006

My roommate has finally gotten around to reading Harry Potter for the first time. She’s about to finish book 6.

Of course, I got jealous watching her have all the fun. So, tonight I picked up book 1 again—the one I carried everywhere with me for a week in my first experience with it, reading and re-reading, absorbing the power and humor and courage of the story, hating the very thought of taking it back to the library even to exchange it for book 2.

Reading it tonight, I got a sudden surprise. A line of Hagrid's reminded me of someone:

“Hagrid,” said Harry, panting a bit as he ran to keep up, “did you say there are dragons at Gringotts?”

“Well, so they say,” said Hagrid. “Crikey, I’d like a dragon.”

It made me laugh. Like children everywhere, I looked up very much to Steve Irwin—it wasn’t possible not to; he lived like he enjoyed life. And he ‘went out with his boots on’, doing what he loved; it seems that he’d have wanted that. It just happened way too soon.

It was good to smile at the memory of him tonight. And I have a feeling that had they lived in the same world, the tempestuous but gentle half-giant and the bright, wonder-filled family man from Australia would have found a lot to talk about in their love for their different monsters.There it is again... that odd mix of happiness and sadness. That juxtaposition has apparently been decreed for me this week.

P.S. All right, Chris. No fair posting about Harry Potter when Blogger still won’t let me comment on your blog! Especially not fair putting up such a good post. I should have more to say later.

I hear Clay Aiken has a new CD out. Which means that I now have to go get it. Which should be followed shortly by a review.

This album consists mostly of classic covers, if I have my facts straight; hopefully that means they gave him better songs than last time. Not one song on his first album was truly up to his incredible voice. Although I liked a couple of them anyway.

Nobody, I might add, has ever made a better Christmas album than Clay did. At least, in my opinion.

We’ve all heard that “The trouble with life is that there’s no background music.” But I can say from experience that having no background music is less weird than having your cell phone play the Can Can at an inopportune moment.

We’ve also all heard that there are seasons of joy and seasons of pain. But I have learned that sweetness and sorrow can be intimately and seamlessly blended into the same sensation; that fallen earth and perfect heaven occasionally meet, like lovers for a brief and tenderly passionate kiss; leaving a memory with an innate, gentle pain—a soreness carrying with it the reminder that we belong to something longer and wider, deeper and higher.

“…when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away… For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I shall know fully just as I also have been fully known. But now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”

9.09.2006

So… if they say in May that “Spring has sprung”, what do they say in September? “Fall has fallen?” “Autumn has got ‘em?”

Whatever ‘they’ say, the season of apples and pumpkins and yellow leaves is slowly but surely taking over here. I look out my window and even the flame trees—I call them that because last year they turned a fiery red and orange—are starting to change color. It won’t be long before the leaves can be raked up into piles for kids to jump into. Man, I miss doing that. My sisters and I used to rake the neighbors’ yard too, and then we’d have enough leaves to jump out of the maple tree into or bury each other standing up.

It’s incredibly hard to get the resulting knots out of one’s long hair afterwards, by the way.

Right now, I guess “late summer” or “Indian summer” fits better than “fall” as a descriptive term. All day we’ve had a breeze blowing, warm but hurried. It has sent every imaginable kind of cloud—other than funnel—through the valley: high, wispy cirrus; puffy and decorative cumulus; dark gray rainclouds, and fog.

I love late summer—that last holdout before fall sets in, when warm temperature still holds but change is in the very air. I love fall too; a last chance to fill up on color before the winter sets in and turns everything gray.

I hate the gray. Some gray is okay. Gray everything is not.

This year, I’m going in armed. I’m prepared to look for color, to gather it about me, to enjoy it wherever I see it. Maybe that’s why I fill my room with houseplants: the peace lily that Terry chopped half the leaves off last year, the dragon tree I found in Walmart and couldn’t resist, the poinsettia I’ve had for at least three Christmases already. My plants would make a good blog-post by themselves.

Ah well. For now, I’m off for a lovely drive through the changing colors. Life is beautiful right now—a gift I don’t dare not to enjoy.

9.08.2006

In several years of working, I don’t think I ever took a full week off of work. Maybe once. Other the time I took a week off regular work to help guide a whitewater rafting trip down the Salmon River in Idaho... that was fun, but it doesn't count.

No, I’m not bragging about my commitment to work. I was stupid. Should have done this years ago. Should have done it every year. Especially in 2004, the year I burned myself out being “committed to work.”

Ah well. At least I finally up-and-did-it. And it feels good. Since I didn’t go anywhere, it kind of feels like a week of Saturdays. I’ve done some much-needed shopping. I got through the Department of Licensing in record time—about two minutes. Yesterday I took a walk. Today I took a nap. I’ve watched Star Wars episodes 4 and 5 with my boyfriend. I’ve done some reading, though I ran out of new books to read on Saturday and didn’t get more till Brandon rescued me with Watership Down and Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire last night.

All in all, a good vacation. But next time I take a week off of work to stay home, I am stacking up on reading material before said vacation ever starts. Because wandering around libraries on a Tuesday afternoon, unsure of what to look for and getting threatened with parking tickets after exactly sixty minutes, is a frustrating experience.And, in the future, I will definitely avoid getting in trouble for talking on my cell phone in the library :-P

9.05.2006

I am online! Hallelujah!Pity you all can't see the dancing. Well, maybe not.Anyways, I have been absolutely and thoroughly annoyed today by my inability to access the internet. I'm on vacation, for crying out loud. Half the fun is being able to kill time online :-PSo here's my question: What happens is, I open my Internet Explorer browser and it says "Finding site..." for a minute, then gives me a "Cannot find server" message. I use wireless. Sometimes I have this problem, sometimes I don't. The network always says it's connected when the problem occurs. Sometimes switching to another wireless network helps, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes rebooting the computer helps, sometimes it doesn't. Closing and reopening the browser has never helped yet. I'm not using a proxy server; hopefully I'm not supposed to be.This really puts a cramp in my blogging style.Perhaps any of you who have worked in computer-related customer support (believe it or not, I have--just not with internet service) will want these facts as well: The computer is plugged in, I am not using the CD-ROM drive as a cup-holder, and there's no power outage.I'm totally, helplessly mystified. If anybody has any suggestions, you'll be showing me an act of great mercy!But on the positive side, I'm on vacation. For the rest of this week. More posts should be coming soon... provided I can get online :-D